Since then? Crickets.
Here’s a look at the complex factors involved in making such a move.
Months later, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters Democrats will move to the bill. But they need more time.
“We’ll get the votes for the minimum wage bill, but there are discussions about how we can, what actions, if any, should we take to make sure that it is fair,” he said Thursday on Capitol Hill.
In addition to there being red states and blue states, it turns out there are high-cost states and low-cost states. And a single minimum wage might not be the thing to bind them.
Despite the rhetoric and promises in 2018 and the importance of economic inequality as a Democratic issue on the 2020 campaign trail, the Democratic Party is split.
Nearly everyone in the party wants to raise the minimum wage. But Democrats who hail from states and districts where it’s not as expensive to live are not as keen on that $15 figure. At least not right now.
It’s not clear at this point when or even if House Speaker Pelosi will move toward the $15 minimum wage bill. (And even if she does, the bill faces a very uncertain future in the Republican-controlled Senate). One alternative to a blanket $15 federal minimum wage, being pushed by moderate Democrats like Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, would calculate a minimum wage regionally.
A decade of no wage hikes
$7.25 doesn’t go as far as it used to
The $15 value has been repeated by Democrats in Congress and some presidential candidates like a mantra in recent years as they criticize corporations, saying they’re undervaluing their employees. It’s a key way they contrast themselves with Republicans, who have focused on helping corporations and businesses with a permanent tax cut rather than workers with a guaranteed higher wage.
Even if Democrats can figure out how to pass a $15 minimum wage, that isn’t a number that will wipe out poverty or even lead to a living wage — enough to cover a worker’s expenses — everywhere in the country.
White House adviser calls a wage hike ‘silly’
While President Donald Trump was on both sides of this issue during his campaign in 2016 and said certain states need much higher wages, his White House has been cool to the idea of a minimum wage increase.
Who makes minimum wage?
The data BLS uses is from a government survey and relies on what wage workers say they make, as opposed to what wage employers say they are paying.
Workers making minimum wage tend to be young, according to BLS, and include a slightly larger percentage of black workers than other racial subgroups. More part-time workers reported making the minimum wage or less than full-time workers. About 60% of the people who reported earning wages at or below the minimum worked in the leisure and hospitality industry, predominantly in restaurants, where their wages may be supplemented by tips.
Tipped workers can be paid less than the minimum wage, but the Raise the Wage Act would end that disparity.
Cities, states and voters have moved on their own
Cost of living varies by region
This is an important regional aspect that helps explain the position of Democrats like Sewell; workers in the South are more likely to be paid hourly — 35% of workers there said they were, compared with less than 25% in every other region of the country. And among those paid hourly, half of them in the South — where there are almost no higher-than-federal minimum wage laws — made at or below the federal minimum wage. Less than a quarter of hourly workers in every other part of the country said they made at or less than the federal minimum wage. But again, there are many more higher-than-federal minimum wage laws in those states.
In Mississippi, where there is no state minimum wage, so the federal wage of $7.25 is in effect, she calculates a living wage at just more than $11 per hour for an individual.
$15 isn’t always enough
San Francisco’s living wage is more than $18 for an individual and more than $36 for an individual with a child. The minimum wage there, which is tied to inflation and the Consumer Price Index, will rise to $15.59 in July. That’s a lot more than you might need to live in parts of Mississippi or Alabama, but maybe not enough in San Francisco.
Pressure has brought change to Amazon, McDonald’s
Some businesses also are moving on their own.
Companies are also having trouble filling jobs
“I had dinner with a bunch of McDonald’s franchisees the other night and they are struggling to find employees at any price,” he added. “I see some of them (offering) $16, $17 per hour, and they still can’t find employees.”
“A larger company can absorb costs in a way that a smaller business can’t, and also make technology investments in a way that not all small businesses can,” he said.
Source : CNN